2

I am trying to rename a few directories that contain "Fever" to contain "Malaria" instead. The instruction is to do it without sed or rename. So far, my errors include mostly lines like

mv: cannot stat ‘retest\nretest/Section-01\nretest/Section-02\nretest/Section-03\nretest/Section-04’: No such file or directory.

The best my code have done is rename directories in the first level.

Here's my directory structure:

Fever-A/Malaria-A-A

Fever-B/Fever-B-A

Fever-B/Fever-B-B

Fever-C/Malaria-A

Fever-C/Fever-C-A

Fever-C/Fever-C-B

Fever-C/Fever-C-C-C

Fever-D/Malaria-A

Fever-D/Malaria-B

The code I have so far is :

#!/bin/bash

# Access directory
#cd $1

# Find all subdirectories in $1 and load up array
all=($(find $1 -type d))
#echo ${all[@]}

# Loop through directories above
for dir in ${all[@]}
do
    # echo "$dir"
    cd $dir
    # List files with "Section" in name
    subdir=(:"Section*")

    # A second loop for directories in each dir with "Section*"
    for item in ${subdir[@]}
    do
            echo $item
            echo "--------------------"

            # Rename operation
            mv $item ${item//Fever/Malaria}
    done
    cd $1
done

Another approach I've considered is using a function like so, but it's not working either: #!/bin/bash

rename(){
    old_names=($(find $1 -maxdepth 1 -type d))

    for item in ${old_names[@]}
    do
            if [[ $item = *Section* ]]; then
                    new_name=${item//Fever/Malaria}
                    mv $item $new_name
            elif [[ $1 != $item ]]; then
                    rename $item
            fi

            rename $1
    done
}

rename $1
SpaghettiThots
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    Limit your `find` statement with the `-name` option, e.g. `find /path -type d -name "*Fever*"` Generally `while read -r fname; do ...stuff...; done < <(find /path -type d -name "*Fever*")` – David C. Rankin Jul 30 '16 at 07:20
  • @KarolyHorvath kindly illustrate. I'd love to understand you better. – SpaghettiThots Jul 30 '16 at 16:13

1 Answers1

2

Below script will do what you're looking for :

#/bin/bash
renamer(){
dirname="${1##*/}"
dirname="${dirname//fever/malaria}"
basedir="${1%/*}"
mv "$1" "${basedir}/${dirname}"
}
export -f renamer
find /path/to/start/search/from -depth -type d -name "*fever*" -exec bash -c 'renamer "$1"' _ {} \;

See it action

$ tree .
.
|-- feverparent
|   |-- feverchild1
|   |   `-- feverish_child
|   |       `-- totally_fever
|   `-- feverchild2
|       `-- feverchild2_has_a_fever_child
`-- myscript

6 directories, 1 file
$ ./myscript
$ tree .
.
|-- malariaparent
|   |-- malariachild1
|   |   `-- malariaish_child
|   |       `-- totally_malaria
|   `-- malariachild2
|       `-- malariachild2_has_a_malaria_child
`-- myscript

6 directories, 1 file

Notes

  1. find manpage says

    -depth Process each directory's contents before the directory itself.
    The -delete action also implies -depth.

  2. See shell [ parameter expansion ] to understand what is being done inside my function renamer.

sjsam
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